


First Day

by JackTheBard



Series: Hope's Peak 79th Class [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-11 00:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12310710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackTheBard/pseuds/JackTheBard
Summary: Hayabusa Eien settles into life at Hope's Peak Academy, meets her classmates, and forges a couple of friendships.





	1. Chapter 1

The gates looked different.

Previously, they had borne the crest of the academy as if it was a badge of honor, but now, they were only utilitarian. What had once shone golden was now wrought-iron, efficient and dark.

Eien thought it made sense. Eight years ago, the world had been brought low because of what had gone wrong behind the doors of Hope’s Peak academy. What had been considered a symbol of hope would now appear vain in comparison, something gaudy in a world that was only now rebuilt after all this time.

Part of her still didn’t know why she was here.

There was still work that needed doing, homes to be rebuilt, crops to be resown. Well… metaphorically speaking. The world was still coming back from the brink of destruction and, while society had collapsed, they hadn’t lost everything. Survivors still knew how to make technology and there were still the people of the various families and groups that had previously been in power to consider.

Eien bit her lip, and felt a comforting nuzzle from the bird on her shoulder. “Mama?” Alex asked, “Are you okay?”

She glanced over at the African Grey and gave a nervous smile, “Yeah. Just nervous, Alex.”

“I don’t like it when Mama is nervous,” Alex said, then let out a despondent whistle. Following in the footsteps of the late Dr. Irene Pepperburg, Eien had used her ornithology skills in order to teach an African Grey parrot how to speak, dubbing him the second version of the Avian Learning Experiment, or “Alex” for short.

While people had been teaching their parrots how to speak for a long time, very few had taught their birds to learn. Eien had been working with the bird for the better part of ten years, and he had managed to reach a level of intelligence and self-awareness remarkable for an animal. After all of that time and effort, Eien had effectively taught Alex to the same level of smarts as a second grader, and he still showed room for growth.

It was what had made her an Ultimate. In part, at least. The remainder was regarding the study and examination of various bird species that were on the verge of going extinct before the Tragedy, as well as quantifying and giving details about avian habits that had only been rumored and never substantiated previously. Finally, she had written an extensive treatise on Corvid familial structures that had at least one copy in each of the major universities around the world.

Hayabusa Eien: The Ultimate Ornithologist.

She wore the title with pride, even when it meant using her almost uncanny ability to communicate with birds to put them in situations where they served as weapons rather than creatures. It was a battle of Hope against Despair, and every little bit of hope would count.

“What do you think is going to happen, Alex?” she asked the bird. She shifted her messenger bag on her shoulder and started to make her way into the building, glancing at the armed guards that stood watch on either side of the door.

He shuffled on her shoulder and gave a quiet squawk, tilting his head to look at Eien a little better. “I do not know.” Eien nodded and tugged her shirt a little tighter about her, as if it were a suit of armor. Fall had barely broken, but Eien couldn’t wait to get her trademark red and black plaid out of the closet and throw it on over her standard black t-shirt.

She wondered what the other students were like.

She knew their names, for the most part. Hell, some of them had met at some point or another during the war against Despair and the attempts to rebuild afterwards. They were all considered the few bits and pieces of hope that lingered after the world had fallen to darkness. The Future Foundation was all but in ruins, with only a small handful of the branch heads surviving. Furthermore, while the New World Program had worked to bring the remnants of Despair back to the side of hope, there were, at most, less than thirty ultimates out there in the world, and more than half of them had been one of the main sources of the Tragedy.

“We will need to bring hope back to the world,” Headmaster Naegi had said, “And we will have to do it right this time. No cutting corners, no corruption. Just hope.”

Even as she made her way to classroom 3B, on the third floor of the school, and paused briefly before she slid the door open.

There were only three other people there, so clearly she was running a little bit early. Even so, the room appeared to have quite a bit of energy in it already. Two of her (presumed) classmates were standing up in a very heated verbal altercation that looked like it could turn violent at any moment.

The larger of the two was very obviously American, an oddity in of itself. What made him even stranger was that he seemed to perfectly fit the stereotype of a wild west cowboy, complete with massive hat, spurs, boots, and a pair of revolvers on his hips. A few tufts of red hair stuck out from under his hat, and there was a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

He was massive. Almost uncomfortably so, and he was built solidly from what she presumed were years of chucking hay bales around. Eien moved to a chair as far away as possible from him, mainly because she was not very tall, herself, and weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet.

A cowboy like that could probably snap her like a twig with relative ease.

Additionally, the fact that he was being loud as hell in such a small space was not reassuring to her, nor was the fact that she couldn’t understand a lick of what he was saying, since he only appeared to be speaking English.

The other party in the argument looked like he had walked out of a high-budget cyberpunk film. The floor-length coat that he wore seemed to have fiber optics in the seams that changed colors with the environment, and the cloth itself seemed to have enough equipment to fuel an entire soundstage in it. LCD touchscreen on the left forearm, a series of knobs and switches all along the right. The chest of the coat had a number of glowing orange buttons set up in a grid, their purpose unkown, and the very bottom of the coat appeared to have speakers encased inside them, ready to blast music at any time.

“And yet, despite your seeming ineptitude, you manage to create a confluence of language that is so far beyond me that I fear it may venture into the realm of idiocy,” the second said, barely moving. His voice was distorted by a mouthpiece that added reverberation to his speech and made him sound much more sinister.

A third person sat between the two of them, curly black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a sunset orange dress with a hoop skirt setting her apart from the rest. She held a long black cane in her hands, and gazed towards the two arguing men without really looking at either of them. After each statement, she spoke, presumably translating between the two.

The cowboy fumed as she translated the walking soundstage’s words into English, then fired back a volley of insults of his own. The young lady translated them flawlessly, using what sounded like the Kansai regional dialect in order to convey his own accent.

“Now you listen here, ya puffed-up hunk of metal. Just ‘cause I ain’t speakin’ the same kinda language as you don’t mean ya can insult me like that. I’m an Ultimate, just like you,” he said, folding his arms and scowling at the other man.

“Your title is as inconsequential as the remainder of your being,” the distorted voice responded. The person it came from seemed so immobile that Eien thought, for a moment, that he was just a statue, but he did blink, “You wear the title of Ultimate as if it did not miraculously fall in your lap as the staff of Hope’s Peak was scraping the bottom of the barrel for dregs that could potentially hold a spark of hope.”

“I’ll have ya know that I’m twice the man you are,” the cowboy responded as he stood up straight and planted his hands on his hips, “Or my name ain’t Garrett Holstein.”

How much more American could one get.

The statue-like man responded, “Based on your size alone, I would estimate you do weigh twice as much as I do. Perhaps it is your so very American addiction to cheeseburgers and other fattening foods, but you appear to be little more than a semi-sentient slab of lard.”

Garrett fumed and reached for one of the pistols at his waist before the girl between them stood up and held out her hands to cease the argument. She spoke in a voice that chimed like church bells, and spoke in English to the angry American. Immediately, he settled down, though it was much like he decided that the man antagonizing him was not worth the waste of bullets.

Afterwards, the girl spoke in Japanese to the monolith alongside her, “And you. Stop antagonizing him. Just because he is from another country does not mean that he is any less of an Ultimate. We’re all classmates here, so the least we can do is get along.”

Eien watched this with something that felt like a halfway point between amusement and fear, even as the girl turned to face her slightly, “Besides, we have another guest.”

As she turned to face Eien (in truth, she faced somewhere to Eien’s left), the ornithologist could see the girl’s eyes were unseeing as Justice herself. There was the obvious question of how the hell the girl was able to figure out her presence when she hadn’t seen and when the two people she had been translating for were practically yelling at the top of their lungs, but she suspected that it had something to do with her talent.

The two men stared at her for a second, blinked, and when the monolith in black leather turned to face her, there was a quiet whirring. For a moment, Eien considered the idea that he was a machine until she took into account that he was breathing… or moving in such a way that looked like breathing.

The blind girl stood up and made her way over to Eien, not even using her cane as she navigated the class. Eien saw that the slow sway of her hoop skirt served as an extra way for her to figure out if there was something in her path, and her steps were measured and meticulous. After she came to nearly the front of the class, she spoke again, saying, “Can you please say something so I know where you are?”

“I’m here,” Eien said, and the blind girl turned to face her.

“Thank you,” she said as she stepped forward and extended her hand, “My name is Kaneshiro Marié.”

And just like that, it clicked into place.

Kaneshiro Marié: The Ultimate Opera Singer.

There was hardly a single person that had fought in the war against despair that didn’t know the name of Kaneshiro Marié. Blind from birth, she managed to become the First Soprano of the Tokyo Opera by the age of thirteen. Not only was she a gifted singer and a master linguist (being fluent in at least seven languages), she had managed to provide the soldiers of the Future Foundation with a much needed morale boost through her radio broadcasts. After being rescued in the first six months of the war, there was a marked reduction in casualties and an increase in victories after she began recording for the Future Foundation radio stations.

Eien had known she was young. She just didn’t realize that they were contemporaries.

While Eien had balked visibly, Marié did not react. After all, she couldn’t exactly see something that was only visible. They shook hands, Eien’s grip a little weak compared to Marié’s own, and Marié asked, “And you are?”

“Oh! Uh… Hayabusa Eien,” she responded.

“And Alex,” the bird on her shoulder said. Immediately, Marié perked up.

“Oh my goodness, you’re the ornithologist! And that lovely second voice that I heard must be the famous Avian Learning Experiment. This is a treat!” She clapped her hands excitedly around her cane and bounced up and down a little bit before turning to the two men that had previously been shouting.

She spoke in rapid fire English to the first, then in Japanese to the second, “Oto, please come up and introduce yourself. She’s going to be our new classmate, after all.”

Sure enough, the two men came up and made their introductions. The American was loud and boisterous, more so than many other Yanks, and gave her an almost bone-crushing handshake.

Oto, the walking soundstage, came forth and did not shake her hand, but instead gave a nod of his head to serve as a bow. Beneath his coat, a series of servos whirred and cranked, indicating that it was very likely he could not bow further.

Eien knew him as well, but it was still a surprise to meet him in person.

Kaga Oto: The Ultimate DJ.

While Marié had dominated the airwaves during the Despair War, Oto had managed to find a niche in holding live concerts that were designed to draw in people and turn them away from Despair. His performances had been largely successful, releasing thousands from the brainwashing effects of Junko Enoshima. The highlight of his career, though, had been when he had gone into a battle of the bands against Saionji Hiyoko and Mioda Ibuki that had resulted in a standstill. While he had not freed the people attending that concert from the shackles of despair, he managed to show that one beacon of hope could stand against two of the Ultimate Despairs and have a fighting chance.

The other, however, Eien had only read about.

Garrett Holstein: The Ultimate Cowboy.

To call him the epitome of American stereotype would be a bit of an understatement. He was originally slated to be one of the inaugural class of Hope’s Peak’s American branch, but the Tragedy ensured that all went down the drain. Instead, he found himself doing everything that he could to survive, including literally creating a town out in the middle of nowhere, far away from any semblance of civilization and riding out the storm. Even so, after reestablishing contact with the Future Foundation, he managed to serve as an excellent soldier and a master of capture and suppression regarding high-value targets.

Why he couldn’t have just stayed in the states, Eien had no idea. His size was beginning to make her nervous.

The introductions were interrupted by the sound of the door sliding open and two more people walking in.

One wore a grey tracksuit over a black tank top, with a blue bob atop her head, and walked with a swagger that said that she owned the whole space. She practically crashed down into one of the chairs and lifted her feet up onto the desk. She practically sneered at the crowd even after the other followed her through the door.

The two couldn’t have been more night and day. While she walked tall and carried a sense of self-superiority about her, he was not meek, but… neutral. He had short blonde hair, shorn close to his scalp at the sides, but longer and wavy on top. It would have dangled in front of his face were it not for some form of product that he had put in it. A pair of half-moon glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and he wore clothes that made him look not unlike a bartender: black vest, white shirt, black tie, and black pants.

The strangest thing about him, however, was his… utility belt. Clipped onto his waist at various points were small cases with who knows what inside. There was, however, one item that stood out rather pointedly.

One of the clips held a pearl-handled razor and a pair of scissors, not unlike what one would see in a barber shop. That, more than anything, betrayed his identity.

Yagami Genjiro: The Ultimate Barber.

During the war, there were a series of communiques from a source only known as “The Barbers.” A father-and-son team, Goro and Genjiro served a number of high-ranking Despair members in the capacity that barbers always served their clientele: to provide a shave, a haircut, and someone to talk to. The Yagami family worked under the impression that if someone trusted someone else to hold a razor to their throat and not slit it, then they would trust them with just about anything.

As a result, Genjiro and Goro managed to compile a great deal of information from a variety of sources that they later passed on to the Future Foundation. The collection of sources, combined with the range of the information obtained ensured that they remained below the radar.

At least until Goro was murdered by one of his clients that had slipped so far into Despair that he couldn’t remain functional.

The other, the woman in the tracksuit with a chip on her shoulder and fury in eyes that were so strikingly violet, was an unknown. Not to say that Eien didn’t have an idea of who she was, but rather that she had a feeling that all of the stories that she had heard about this woman were true.

The woman turned to Eien, and she realized she was staring and glanced away. Though, after a fashion, the woman removed the jacket of her tracksuit and tossed it over the back of her chair, muttering something about the heat.

Up and down her arms ran a collection of tattoos, so unmistakably Yakuza that it was impossible to imagine that she could have been anything else.

Fujiyama Yu: The Ultimate Driver.

For someone that had been working under the Kuzuryu family, she had a rap sheet that was, strangely, very short. Mainly because she had only ever gotten caught twice. Once when she took a cop car for a joyride at the age of ten, and then a second time when she had turned herself in to the Future Foundation.

Her skill behind the wheel had become the stuff of legend, able to take even semi-trucks drifting down a mountainside and deliver them with all their cargo intact. Many people believed that, as long as something had a steering wheel, it wasn’t going to be safe from her.

However, because of her Yakuza ties, she had wound up on the wrong side of the Despair war at the start, and transported a number of dangerous items for the Ultimate Despairs… including people. Official Future Foundation records (those that Eien had access to, at least) indicated that she had a cargo of mothers and their children, and let them go instead of delivering them to their destination.

As she cracked her knuckles, Eien could see that she must have only made that one mistake during her time under Kuzuryu employ, as she only had the final joint of one of her pinkies missing.

After a moment, she turned and stared at Genjiro with a sneer on her face. “What are you looking at?” she said, and Eien felt the tension grow in the room, thick enough to cut with a knife.

“Someone that appears to be trying too hard, it seems,” the barber responded, sitting down in his own seat uncomfortably close to Eien’s own. At the very least, Marié served as a calming influence, standing alongside her with a warm smile on her face. That presence alone made Eien feel slightly more comfortable, but there wasn’t much else that it did.

After all, should an altercation break out, what would a blind girl be able to do?

“At least I don’t look like I fished my clothes out of a bargain bin at Bartenders ‘r’ Us,” Yu said, turning to face him and leaning forward. She wore intimidating well, and there were scars on her knuckles indicating that they had been split open several times.

Genjiro, on the other hand, only lowered his half-moon glasses down his nose a little further, looking more like a librarian than a barber, and said only, “Better than looking like I fished them out of the dumpster.”

Yu shot up so quickly that that she knocked over her chair, and stared coldly at the barber, making her way towards him. “You wanna run that by me again?”

“Your outfit looks like trash,” Genjiro said, inspecting his nails as if the woman staring him down wasn’t even worth his time.

“Looks better than you’re about to, you piece of-” Yu said, only to have the wind knocked out of her.

Eien had seen where the sentence was going and acted on instinct. She had grabbed the nearest thing that she could and hit Yu with it, right in the stomach, and stopped the sentence dead in its tracks. Any and all semblance of meekness had gone right out the window, and she said only, “Do not. Swear. In front of the bird.”

That was the one big rule about Alex: You don’t teach him new words without Eien’s permission, and you especially don’t teach him how to swear. While it may be amusing for someone to hear a parrot saying “What the fuck” over and over again, it was not appropriate considering Eien’s intent to study the learning capabilities of a member of an Avian species.

At heart, and in mind, Alex was a child. And children were impressionable. Especially when it came to words that they weren’t allowed to say. You could teach them all of the words of “Circle of Life,” but the second one of them hears, “Son of a bitch” for the first time, that’s all they’ll say for two weeks.

Besides, swearing had no place in science.

So here she stood, driving the tip of Marié’s cane into Yu’s solar plexus, causing the ex Yakuza’s eyes to widen in shock and her expression to very quickly cycle through confusion, pain, and eventually outrage. She gave a cough and grabbed the cane, pushing it aside and looming over Eien. Alex gave an irritated caw and said, “Leave my mama alone.”

“Shut up, chicken,” Yu said as she stared coldly at her attacker. Behind Eien, Marié asked about her cane in a despondent tone of voice. Yu’s face remained hard as stone as she said, “And what are you going to do, huh?”

Garrett tried to step in, but received a punch to the face for his trouble, complete with him stumbling back and clutching at his nose. Oto did nothing to hide his amusement at that sight, and Genjiro moved two seats away, satisfied that Yu’s ire was directed somewhere else.

“You swear in front of my bird, and your death will be slow,” Eien said, trying to match Yu’s intensity, and succeeding inasmuch as someone of her size could succeed when staring up at someone that has probably killed a man for money.

“And how,” Yu responded, tossing aside the cane, prompting a low moan from Marié, “Do you plan to accomplish that.”

Another voice joined the fray, a clear tenor that sounded almost heroic, given the circumstances. “She’ll have me do it for her.”


	2. Chapter 2

The entire room turned to face the newcomer. He carried himself with the same confidence that Marié had, indicating a performance-based background, and he had a certain gravitas about him that meant that he would have been destined for politics in another lifetime. He wore jeans and sneakers from the waist down, but a black suit jacket, thick-rimmed glasses, and a lime green shirt from the waist up. Unlike anyone else in the room, he had facial hair, showing a much higher degree of “adultiness” than most anyone else.

Yu let out a scoffing laugh and said, “And what are you going to do? Pose and hope that I’ll be stunned?” Admittedly, the newcomer did look like he’d walked out of the pages of GQ, but that only seemed to amuse him.

“Then I am afraid that I will have to introduce you to a friend with an edge as sharp as your tongue,” he responded, moving his jacket aside to reveal a belt knife in its sheath.

Yu moved towards him and said, “You think I don’t know who you are? You’re nothing more than a poser. A wannabe. Your ultimate talent ain’t squat compared to mine.”

He only leaned in, his face barely a foot away from hers. She could strike him easily if she so desired, but she froze up as he said, “At least my talent delivered people from evil instead of carting them directly into its arms.” He moved past her, even as her hands curled into fists, and she gave a furious “tch!” as she made her way back to her seat, clearly defeated.

The newcomer retrieved Marié’s cane, returned it to her, then took a seat right next to Eien and said, “So this is the famous Alex,” he said as he extended a hand to the bird.

Alex tapped his beak on the extended fingers as a form of greeting and said, “Hello.”

Eien, in turn, asked, “Who are you?”

“Kurokawa Yanagi,” he said, offering her a handshake with a smile. “Pleasure.” His name, too, rang familiar to her as she took his hand.

Kurokawa Yanagi: The Ultimate Stage Poet.

While not as blatantly American as Garrett was, Yanagi was one by birth, according to United States law. His father was a major stationed at an Okinawa military base, where he had met Yanagi’s mother, and the rest was history. Completely bilingual, Yanagi managed to weave poetry in both English and Japanese that would go over like a loud fart in church, but had a compelling passion behind it when it was spoken.

That passion was used to inspire Future Foundation soldiers during the height of the Ultimate Despairs through a series of performances before what would amount to tide-turning battles. However, though his and Marié’s methods were similar, their execution was different. His was only done in a live show, while hers was through the airwaves, and he had fought alongside the soldiers afterwards.

“So you’re the guy that works with words,” Eien said after their handshake was concluded.

“And you’re the gal that works with birds,” he responded in kind.

On Eien’s shoulder, Alex said “I am bird.”

“That you are, little fella,” Yanagi confirmed with a chuckle, “that you are.”

“Why did you stand up for me?” Eien asked.

“We all fought against bullies,” Yanagi responded with a shrug, “So we should know better than to pick on someone smaller than us.”

Eien arched a brow at him and felt a little bit of a smile come onto her face, “You’re kind of self-righteous, you know that?”

Yanagi paused for a few seconds, blinked once, twice, thrice, then said, “You’re not wrong,” with a smile as if she had paid him a compliment.

Now, more than any other time, Eien realized that all Ultimates had their eccentricities.

Next to arrive was a petite girl with dark skin and hair done in a collection of braids, each dyed a different color. She wore overalls spattered with dully shining metal, and her hiking boots seemed to be just as worn as the rest of her clothing.

Takamori Akira: The Ultimate Electrical Engineer.

Raised by a single father who worked as an engineer for Sony, she learned the basics of electrical engineering without even knowing Ohm’s Law. A prodigy in the art, she learned very quickly how to construct increasingly complex circuits that her father often presented at his job. Even while she was in middle school, she pioneered the use of high-volume capacitors in handheld controllers that way gamers could continue playing even after the battery had technically run out, which got her a job at Nintendo before the world’s collapse.

During the war, she managed to create designs for radios that were able to transmit over vast distances and a multitude of electrical traps and mazes that had been put to use in the defense of Future Foundation compounds.

The man that came in with her was of a similar height, but built like a gymnast in a plain black tee, straight white hair atop his head dangling in front of his face to slightly obscure almost black eyes. He moved with a grace that wasn’t… quite right, and scanned the room quickly as if to ascertain the effectiveness of its construction.

Kudou Jin: The Ultimate Architect.

When it came to the buildings that the Future Foundation constructed during the course of the war, Jin and Akira worked in tandem, with her providing the layout of the electrical systems, hard wiring, land lines, and Ethernet, while Jin handled almost everything else.

The end results were buildings that were as functional as they were seemingly non-Euclidean. While the building may have seemed like a hybrid of a Gothic cathedral and the sunken city of R’lyeh on the outside, its inside revealed that it was not only fully functional and efficient, but could withstand a sustained tank barrage over the course of five days without disrupting the work occurring within.

Eien had taken shelter in one of their buildings after Sonia Nevermind had arrived with what seemed like the entire army of her nation, only to have the siege broken by the arrival of Vice Chairman Munakata with a sizable force. The place didn’t even seem dented when she had stepped outside.

The two took seats one right next to the other, clearly comfortable with each other’s presence. Eien couldn’t quite tell whether it was because of how often they had worked with one another, or if there was something a little more going on.

So focused was she on them that she didn’t notice the person that had been so strategically situated behind Jin that they had completely out of sight.

“Looks like we have a mouse in our midst,” Yanagi commented with a little chuckle, prompting a cold glare from the girl in question.

She had hair that was so bright red that cherries seemed subdued, and had piercings galore. Three in her left ear, two in her left eyebrow, a handful of studs in her right ear, one septum piercing, and a pair of rings in a spiderbite piercing in the right corner of her mouth. She, like Oto, wore a longcoat, but hers reeked of practicality more than appearance. Even as she moved, Eien could see a number of pockets lining the inside, presumably filled with tools of her trade.

“Har. Har. Har,” the girl said, her face barely moving as she stared at Yanagi, “I’m surprised they didn’t name you the Ultimate Comedian after that display.”

Marié was confused as she clutched her cane, “I didn’t hear her come in… why didn’t I hear her come in?”

“Because I didn’t want you to,” she responded, “And if I can fool your ears, then I’m clearly doing something right.”

Eien looked over to see Marié with a very worried expression, clutching her cane defensively. The red-haired girl noticed and rolled her eyes, “Oh come on, blind girl. I’m not going to kill you in your sleep. That’s just rude.”

“I wasn’t thinking you were-”

“Yeah you were,” she cut Marié off.

“Why did he call you a mouse?” Yu asked from her side of the room.

“Because of my name,” the girl responded.

“Which is?” Oto probed.

“Akibara Nezumi.”

Akibara Nezumi: The Ultimate Thief.

More than just a skilled pickpocket or burglar, Nezumi earned a name on the streets for stealing whatever she wanted from whomever she wanted, and never really got caught. The Future Foundation wasn’t even entirely sure that she existed until they caught a few frames of footage with her on it. Aside from that, she had been a total ghost.

Yu stood up and made her way over to the petite (but not mousy in the slightest) thief, a snarl on her lips as she cracked her knuckles. “You’ve done some naughty…” she glanced over at Alex and the wolfish smile on Yanagi’s face, “stuff… to the Kuzuryu family.”

“And I thought you defected,” Nezumi responded matter-of-factly.

“They ain’t Despair anymore, so I’m with them again,” Yu said.

“Wrong,” Yanagi said from across the room, “You’re with us, now.”

“Shut up, clown,” Nezumi said as she stood up and stared at Yu with a sour expression. “You know what… I remember you. I remember stealing all of your cargo out from under your nose the year before the Tragedy,” she said, taunting the ex-Yakuza with a smile.

Yu seemed ready to throw a punch, and Yanagi didn’t seem like he was going to stop. Garrett wasn’t in the mood to be punched in the nose again, and everyone else was mainly waiting to see what would happen. It was only Jin who spoke up.

“Please, for heavens’ sake. Cease and desist with your bravado and resume your seats. We are not here to be enemies, but rather hope in the darkness,” he said in a tired, almost sleepy tone, folding his arms and staring pointedly at the two of them.

Yanagi blinked for a few moments, then leaned over and said to Eien, “Still think I’m the pompous one?”

“I said self-righteous.”

“Still think I’m the self-righteous one?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough.”

“I like him,” Alex murmured on Eien’s shoulder, to which Yanagi gave a broad smile.

“Thanks, little buddy. I like you too.”

Across the room, the situation diffused, mainly because Jin’s verbal purple prose had put Yu’s massive rageboner to bed and tucked it in nice and sweet-like.

Yu stalked back to her seat and sat down, stuffing her hands into her pockets and scowling at the simple concept of human beings even as another one of their classmates burst in through the door.

If Eien thought that Garrett was large, this man put him to shame. He was large in such a way that she believed that he was probably born at the size of a toddler, resulting in a great deal of pain for the poor guy’s mother. He had a massive mane of hair, bordering on being dreadlocks, whitened by sun and salt, wore a pair of shorts, sandals, and a well-worn tank top, and his skin was too dark to be a natural tan. A tattoo from one of the Pacific Islands coursed down his right arm and the left held a lobster trap with its still-wriggling prey inside. Slung across the man’s body was a drinking gourd and a small satchel, and he wore a smile on a lightly-bearded face.

“Hey! Sorry I’m late! Did I miss anything?” he asked. Within its cage, the lobster snapped its claws impudently.

“A brawl almost starts between an ex-Yakuza and a master thief, you ask ‘did I miss anything.’ A clown tries insulting the both of us, you ask ‘did I miss anything.’ I bet you went swung by Hawaii on December 8th, 1941 and said, ‘Hey, it’s been a while, Pearl Harbor! Did I miss anything?’”

Yanagi only stared at her and said, “Dude. Too soon.”

“Shut up, clown. It’s been over eighty years.”

The large man frowned at the small woman and said, “There is no need to be that rude, you know.”

“Eh,” Nezumi responded with a shrug and leaned back into her chair.

“And who are you?” Akira said with an arched eyebrow and an amused smile on her face.

So opened a can of worms that should have remained sealed shut and buried four leagues beneath the earth.

The man struck one pose, “Shin!”

Another, “Kai!”

A third, final pose that looked suspiciously unlike the “dab” phenomenon that had swept the internet before the tragedy, “RYOOOOOO!”

After a moment, Alex started bobbing up and down excitedly, continuing to scream, “OOOOOO!” with the man at the front of the class.

Within its cage, the lobster made irritated lobster noises. Nobody save for Eien seemed to pay it any mind. Everyone else was far too focused on the man that was so hammy he could have supplied a thousand soup kitchens with Christmas dinner.

Shinkai Ryo: The Ultimate Fisherman.

Eien didn’t have a lot of information about this guy, save for the fact that he was the last male member of his family alive and that he had been the sole reason his fishing village had made it through the Tragedy.

The truth was that his father and brothers had been on a ship that was destroyed by Despair fleets, and that he had only been lucky enough to survive the attack because he was diving for oysters at the time. Since so many of his village’s ships were destroyed in the attack, he was the sole fisherman (meaning the single fisherman, as opposed to a man that fishes for sole) capable of providing for his town.

So he taught everyone how to fish.

The result had been a village that, aside from that initial, devastating blow, went through the Tragedy mostly unscathed, and had even managed to provide for a few other villages in the nearby area. Much like Garrett, Ryo had become something of a folk hero to his people.

And now, he was definitely not dabbing in front of his classmates with a lobster cage in hand. As if it was a premonition of what was to come, the lobster seemed to be turning red with embarrassment from simply being in the same vicinity as the man.

Eien mirrored the poor crustacean’s feelings.

Even as Alex continued screaming on Eien’s shoulder while Ryo definitely did not dab, another group of people stood in the doorway with varying degrees of amusement. 

The least amused of the bunch was a young lady with green eyes and hair to match. She was dressed in running shorts and wore a jersey that only said “Dodge This.”

“Is this what we have to look forward to all year?” she said as she made her way into the room and sat down. If the hair wasn’t enough of a giveaway for Eien, the humorless and almost jaded worldview was.

Chigusa Fumiko: The Ultimate Soccer Star

Never had there been a tale of more woe than that of Fumiko and her run away from home. The Tragedy befell her when she was participating in the Junior World Cup Finals, and she had to do nothing but run in order to escape death. She had lost two members of her team, and had lived up in the woods with a number of other survivors, starting a small community until the Future Foundation came to the city below.

The second wore a pair of running shorts as well, but was clad in a polo shirt from the waist up, and had her curly blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. Combining her great height with her appearance, she seemed so incredibly American that it was almost impossible to consider that she was one hundred percent natural born Japanese.

She carried a duffel bag with her, and the handle of a tennis racket stuck out of one side. That was the primary tool of her trade.

Suzukaze Itsumi: The Ultimate Tennis Star

After the first time she had even seen the Williams sisters go toe to toe in Wimbledon, Itsumi had devoted herself to becoming just as good, if not better, than they were. She was playing in exhibition matches by age eleven, and was considered one of the frontrunners for the Japanese Summer Olympics team when Despair had struck.

However, while most of the other Ultimates found ways to use their talents in the war against Despair, she ran into a little bit of a wall. She then proceeded to blow up that wall with grenades.

Similar to Yanagi, she had devoted herself to the Future Foundation military, serving as a form of living artillery that served up death with a reinforced tennis racket. She had earned a multitude of names over the course of the war, including “Death from Above,” “Bunker Buster,” and even “The Ex-Wife.”

She stared at Ryo for a moment, chuckled, then moved to take her seat towards the back of the class, saying, “For a moment, I was worried he would be our teacher… you’re not our teacher, are you?”

Ryo stopped not-dabbing and moved to a seat at the front of the class, sitting down and staring very intently at the lobster in the cage. It practically withered and stopped moving, coming to a full stop as Ryo intimidated his catch into quiescence. He returned his attention to Itsumi in the back of the class and gave a broad, impossibly white grin, “Nah. I’m just excited to be here.”

Eien, however, was barely paying any mind to the exchange because she was so fixated on the third woman that passed through the door. Her hair was done in a black undercut, and her right eye was covered with a black eyepatch. The uncovered eye shone a piercing blue, and Eien’s heart skipped a beat.

Hiromi Chie: The Ultimate Marine Biologist.

After seeing a single picture of her, Eien had gathered up every bit of information she could possibly scrounge about the woman in question. After discovering and managing to successfully capture a species of giant squid in the South China Sea at the age of twelve, Chie had made a splash (ba dum tss) in the Marine Biology community. It seemed that the only thing that even came close to her love of the creatures of the deep was her love of pirates.

When Despair had struck, Chie had made a point to put that love to work, commandeering a research vessel at first, then eventually a battleship of the American Navy. She worked very closely with the Future Foundation in order to provide people all along the coast with everything from food to weaponry, and adopted a look befitting someone in the late seventeen-hundreds Spanish Main. Even when a stray bullet during some ship-to-ship combat took out her right eye, she didn’t slow down, only throwing on an eyepatch and claiming that it only bolstered her aesthetic.

Eien felt her face heating up, and didn’t even notice when Alex nibbled on her ear. “Mama? Are you okay? Mama?”

Eventually, she snapped out of her reverie, and said, “Yeah. I’m fine. I was miles away.” She was, indeed, miles away, but only because she had a massive crush on the pirate lady that was now taking a seat in the second row behind Yu.

“Need a glass of water?” Yanagi asked, a wry smile on his face that didn’t go away even when Eien gave him a confused stare.

“What?”

“You’re looking really thirsty there,” he said, and gave a little chuckle at the notion.

Eien’s face heated up, and she found herself giving Yanagi the most heated glare that she possibly could, but it was only dampened by her embarrassment.

She almost didn’t notice as Chie made her way over to Eien with a concerned expression. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Eien stared up at Chie, the computer of her brain throwing up a blue screen of death.

She was just… so… pretty.

“Miss?” Chie said, reaching out and resting her hand on Eien’s shoulder, “Miss, you’re red as a tomato, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Mama?” Alex said as he turned his head and nibbled on her ear again, “You look very red.”

“Do I?” Eien said, almost dreamily. Her voice was weak, airy, and worrying to people that didn’t know what was going on in her head.

“Yeah,” Chie said as she reached out and rested the back of her hand on Eien’s forehead, “Holy smokes, you’re burning up.”

“I’m-I’m-I’m fine! I swear!” Eien said, waving her hands frantically in order to get Chie to back off. On one hand, the contact was very welcome and very nice. On the other, she was making Eien incredibly nervous and embarrassed. “I’m just… I’m thirsty! I just need some water, that’s all,” she said, then gave a laugh that was, admittedly, not very convincing.

Chie wasn’t convinced, but she still backed away. One seat over, Yanagi tried to restrain his laughter and succeeded save for a few sputters, prompting a cluck of irritation from Alex. “Do you need to go to the nurse’s office?” Chie asked.

“No, no! I’m fine,” Eien responded, taking a deep breath and trying to force out some of her worries with the exhale. “See? All better.”

Chie still wasn’t convinced, but nodded slowly as she made her way back to her seat just as the door opened once again.

A man with small, circular glasses and dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail made his way into the room with a very disgruntled student thrown over his shoulder. The student in question wore a ratty white t-shirt, cargo shorts, and a pair of slippers. His whole body was covered in a matted bath robe, and his hair looked (and smelled, good god Eien could tell that he reeked from here) like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. A pair of old man glasses perched on a nose that seemed a little too large for his face, and he generally looked discontent to be anywhere out in public.

Eien couldn’t blame him, and honestly wished that he had stayed the hell home. She had read his dossier, but had not seen any pictures of him, and now realized why.

Sueoka Hideo: The Ultimate Physicist.

His immense mental capability was only matched and exceeded by his distaste for anything social. He had been discovered living in, more or less, his own filth approximately two years into the Despair war, and seemed none the worse for wear as a result. He had subsisted entirely on freeze-dried veggies and cup noodles for that whole time, and simply continued working on his various equations pertaining to macrophysics, metaphysics, microphysics, and pretty much any other kind of physics that one could think of, including at least three branches he had started to pioneer himself.

Eien partially suspected that the only reason he had managed to solve two of the Millenium Prize Problems before the age of fifteen was because he hadn’t really done anything else during that time, nor did he have any desire to.

The man carrying him put Hideo down and started to write on the board, jotting out “Mr. Hagakure” even as Hideo tried to book it for the exit.

“Someone stop him, please?” Mr. Hagakure said in a very tired voice.

Nobody so much as moved, though there was one more person that came through the door and put a stop to the mad charge (more of a shuffle, a shamble, even) of the physicist making a beeline to freedom.

Hideo practically crashed face first into her chest, and the fact that there was so much padding there was probably the only reason he didn’t have a broken nose. However, the rebound sent him stumbling back to fall flat on his ass, and staring up at the newcomer with a very disgruntled expression.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said in a cheerful chirp of a voice. She adjusted a pair of round glasses on the bridge of her nose (they were nearly twice the diameter of Mr. Hagakure’s, indicating that they were there for function rather than appearance) and made her way into the classroom, “Someone was trying to ding me on dress code, but I was like ‘nah.’”

Sure enough, the outfit that she wore would have been in no way acceptable in a standard school environment. She wore a red tank top that seemed to be straining at the seams, and a pair of cutoff shorts that barely came to mid-thigh. A massive mane of black hair was pulled back into a barely-contained ponytail and tumbled down her back to stop just shy of her rear.

Since everyone else was already here, process of elimination told Eien exactly who it was.

Tatsuda Yorokobi: The Ultimate Horror Author.

She had been lauded and praised for her skill with words since she was ten. Watching Ringu with her family inspired her to expand on the brand of psychological horror, and her love for Junji Ito’s manga only furthered what many people called a maddening voyage into a realm of writing that had been previously unexplored. At age eleven, she released a book called The Wasp King’s Gift that quickly clambered to the top of the charts due to its unreliable narrator, dark fantasy elements, and psychological horror-laden narrative, and she continued to produce record-breaking novels at a rate of at least once every two months.

During the war, however, she devoted her skills to solving mysteries or at least figuring out how some of the more brutal murders at the hands of Despair occurred. Her skills were partially what allowed Seiko Kimura to track down Mikan Tsumiki and apprehend her. All in all, she was a valuable asset to the Future foundation, but…

Eien didn’t expect her to look like a Playboy Magazine centerfold.

Yorokobi took her seat next to Yanagi in the front row and gave him a sly wink, to which he responded with a chuckle of his own. She could practically see all the little Yanagis in his brian cranking up the knob that read “suaveness,” which Eien found to be at least a little bit worthy of an eyeroll. 

After another ill-fated escape attempt by Hideo, and Ryo firmly placing the surly young man in his seat, Mr. Hagakure began to address the class.

“You all know why you are here,” he said, reaching into one of the bulging pockets of his coat, “Your auras pulse with the determination of a cockaroach, a hope that will not be extinguished. You sixteen are the seventy-ninth class of Hope’s Peak Academy. Are you aware of what that means?”

Eien did not like being compared to a cockaroach, yet remained silent. If Hagakure had a point, he would get to it quickly… she hoped.

“You are to be the light of hope in this new world. Your hope shall signal the beginning of a new era, the dawning of a new age. So have I predicted!” his voice drew to a climax as he whipped a crystal ball out of his pocket and held it at arm’s length.

Somewhere in the room, a cricket chirped. Mr. Hagakure visibly deflated and he set the crystal ball on the teacher’s desk and let out a sigh. “Come on, guys. I spent a whole week preparing that speech. The least you can do is give me a little bit of applause.”

A cursory glance around the room quickly revealed that nobody had any intention of applauding him. They all knew the legends of the mystical weirdo that was Hagakure Yasuhiro, and most of them considered him a fraud at worst and an efficient con artist at best.

Under his breath, Hideo muttered something that Eien could barely parse together as, “… sixty-two point nine percent chance of breakage by the end of the class period…”

“Anyway,” Mr. Hagakure continued, pacing about the front of the class, “I’m gonna be your homeroom teacher for those occasions when we do actually have class. Any questions?”

That phrasing immediately made Eien raise her hand, but Yu beat her to the punch by blurting out a question without raising her hand. “Yeah, I got a question. Why are we even here? Don’t you think we’re all a little old for high school? I mean, you’re probably the same age as most of us.”

There were murmurs of agreement from all around the room, and Eien could see that even the ones that were staying quiet were nodding in concession.

“Chairman Munakata of the Future Foundation thinks our situation these days is less than ideal,” Mr. Hagakure began, “Even though the Remnants of Despair have been pretty much wiped out, we still have to have hope in the world. And, because of the Final Killing Game five years ago, we’re really short on that. The world has started to rebuild, but we need new hope, and that’s where you come in.”

Eien raised her hand again, though her question had changed. When Mr. Hagakure called on her, she asked, “But why do we have to improve our skills now? We’ve seen enough combat and done enough with our skills that we should be able to help the world rebuild right now instead of completing a school life that we don’t need?”

“It’s because some of you didn’t even use your talents the past eight years,” Mr. Hagakure responded, “Ms. Hiromi back there turned pirate. Mr. Holstein didn’t do as much cattle rustling as he did build a town. Ms. Chigusa right here didn’t get to use her soccer talent for anything save running.” Fumiko noticeably wilted at that, curling in on herself furiously.

Mr. Hagakure continued, “Even Ms. Suzukaze wound up tweaking her skills for combat instead of their original purpose. What we want you to do is to improve the skills you have to the point where no amount of despair could ever hamper you down.”

“So you want us to become superheroes?” Marié said with a curious expression on her face.

“You already are,” Mr. Hagakure told them, “Every single one of you did things during the war that nobody else could have possibly done. The Future Foundation and the staff of Hope’s Peak academy want you to build upon the talents you already have to become a greater hope for the world, and to reward you for service with a chance at a normal life.”

“Normal as our lives can get, anyway,” Yanagi muttered, “After all we’ve been through.”

“You were supposed to be the 79th class of Hope’s Peak academy, guys,” Hagakure said with a shrug, “Now you are the 79th class. We need you to become hope because, to be real? There isn’t much of anyone else.”

He leaned against the teacher’s desk and let his message sink in. Eien stared down at her hands, realized the things that she had done in order to make sure that Despair would not rule the world. She had corrupted her purpose to command birds to do harm instead of to study them and gain greater knowledge.

She knew that Hagakure was right. And from the faces of most everyone in the room, they knew that he was as well. Some of them had to atone. Some of them needed to become better. Some of them just needed a good night’s rest.

There was a shattering sound as Hagakure’s crystal ball fell off the desk and onto the floor, followed by his heartbroken sobs as he said, “Noooo! I spent fifteen million yen on that one!”

In the back of the room, there was a quiet chuckle from the Ultimate Physicist.

Eien looked about the room, taking in the faces of every single one of the students that surrounded her.

These sixteen, these students that were too old for school…

It was up to them to become the hope of the world.


	3. Chapter 3

After everything was said and done, the students dispersed in order to move into their rooms and settle in as quickly as they could. Mr. Hagakure informed them that they were going to have class meet ups only on Mondays, and that the rest of the week, they were going to be allowed and encouraged to develop their talents and socialize with one another.

Considering the current set of students, Eien already had very solid designs on who she would want to interact with and who she wouldn’t.

Hideo didn’t seem like he wanted to interact with anyone, so Eien would respect that wish. The fact that he smelled like the hybrid of a dumpster and the bathroom of a dive bar made respecting his wishes a lot easier.

Garrett was large, boisterous, and very American. He also didn’t appear to speak any Japanese so she would have to spend an inordinate amount of time overcoming the language barrier.

The same applied for Ryo, save for the fact that Eien was actually able to understand what he was saying. She didn’t know if that bettered or worsened the situation.

Oto came across as kind of a jackass that looked down on people that he thought were less intelligent or talented than himself. Plus, making fun of Garrett just because he didn’t speak Japanese was not a major endorsement for her to spend time with him.

She had already gotten off to a bad start with Yu, especially considering that she had hit her with Marié’s cane, and she would likely go out of her way to be rude to Eien (and probably Alex) afterwards.

Nezumi seemed to be standoffish more than anything else, and Eien honestly didn’t think that she wanted to be here, even though she had accepted the invitation.

Additionally, she didn’t want to spend time with Akira or Jin because they already seemed attached at the hip and Eien didn’t want to go into a situation where she would be outnumbered.

Fumiko was in a depressive slump where she didn’t want to be around anybody. Eien could tell. She’d had those moments where not even Alex could cheer her up and she needed to be far away from pretty much anyone else in order to get through them.

Chie was right out. She was too pretty and Eien was too awkward.

That left only five members of the class that Eien could actually feasibly spend time with and not have any sort of altercation… she hoped.

Two of them, Itsumi and Yorokobi, seemed normal despite their reputations. She had expected Itsumi to be a battle-hardened soldier and Yoro to be, at the very least, grim and unstable. The two seemed like normal gals that you would spend time with at the mall instead of someone who had literally blown people to pieces and a woman that knew how to give you nightmares in the course of four sentences.

Then there was Marié, who was so sweet that Eien could feel herself getting cavities just by being around her. If only to apologize for stealing her cane and using it to hit someone earlier, Eien wanted to risk a visit to the dentist.

Genjiro seemed a nice enough person, if only because he had that aura about him that made her feel like she could trust him. Perhaps that was his natural barber charm, or perhaps he was a genuinely good guy that she could spend time with. Either way, she’d have to probably sit down for a haircut soon in order to find out.

That left Yanagi. He seemed arrogant, self-centered, pompous, and altogether an egotistical tool that believed himself to be the hero of the story… but he had stepped up and was nothing but polite to Eien in the brief time that they had known one another. Once again, she couldn’t quite put her finger on whether or not it was his poetic charm or the idea that he was actually a nice person.

Considering that she wasn’t able to tell ta a first glance, Eien considered it a blessing that she didn’t really like guys.

She cracked a window and kept the door open to keep the flow of air passing through her room and began to unpack all of the boxes that dotted her room. Members of the Hope’s Peak staff had been kind enough to carry everything in, though they had not deigned to unpack the various boxes.

Alex’s cage was the first thing to be set up, taking up most of one of the desks in the room, and Eien let him hang out in his personal haven. Of course, Eien left the cage door open so he could fly around the room as much as he liked, and gave him a small cup of seeds and dried fruit for him to nosh on.

“Mama, why are we here?” Alex asked as Eien began to put her clothes in the appropriate drawers.

“Because we worked hard over the past few years and now we’re getting rewarded for it,” she responded, breaking down one of the boxes and putting it in the closet for when she would eventually have to move out of the dorms.

“It doesn’t feel like a reward,” Alex said, eating a dried cranberry and giving an irritated cluck. “Some of the others are mean.”

Eien paused for a moment, then kept going, her hands faltering for a moment as she started to take out some of the items from the hangar box and put them into her closet. “They’re people, just like me. And not everyone is going to be as nice as I am.”

“I don’t like the one with the blue hair. She was gonna hurt you,” Alex said, shifting from foot to foot and nibbling on an almond before deciding against it and giving a quiet grumble. He flapped his wings a few times and landed on the bed so he could be a little closer to Eien, and began to pace around the foot of it.

“Yeah, but she didn’t,” Eien said, though it was hardly a consolation. “Listen, everyone is trying to make different kinds of impressions. She’s trying to be tough, and we’re trying to be ourselves. We’ll just have to stay away.”

Alex didn’t particularly like that response, but he did not voice his concern. Instead, he flapped his way back to the birdcage and quietly played with some of the toys that Eien had given him.

The rest of the unpacking was quick going, and Eien managed to get everything into the small dresser they had provided for her. “I’m going to see if Marié needs any help,” she said to the parrot as she closed up his cage, “Be good for mama, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll take a rest,” Alex said as he went over to the corner that he used to sleep. “Be good. I’ll see you later.”

Eien blew him a kiss as she made her way out of the room and turned off the lights in her wake. She closed the door behind her and felt it automatically lock. Satisfied that nobody would mess with her bird, she made her way down the hallway. Her room was the third on the right if one were coming from the dining hall. Fumiko’s room was across the way, and she had Yanagi on one side and Chie on the other. 

She didn’t know if she was going to be able to survive in proximity to that much attractive. 

Marié’s room was the first door on the left if one were coming from the dining hall, and the door stood open as Eien approached. There was no breeze to waft through due to the room’s lack of a window, but Eien had the distinct sense that the opera singer was of the same mindset that the rooms needed to be aired out a little bit.

She knocked on the wall just inside the room and a voice came from the bathroom, “Come in!”

Eien stepped in and started to look around, surprised at the sheer amount of chaos that the room seemed to be in. All of the boxes were laid out in a grid, but they covered a vast portion of the floor, as if Marié was going out of her way to make it harder for herself to move.

“Already making a mess of the place?” Eien asked, a little curious as to the layout.

“It’s for measuring,” Marié said as she made her way out of the bathroom and started to pick through one of the boxes. “Though I get the feeling that you didn’t come over here to question my organizational skills.”

“Ah, no,” Eien said, a little abashedly, “I was wondering if you needed help.”

“That would be appreciated,” Marié said as she pointed directly at a box near the wall. It was a hanger box much like Eien’s, though she suspected that it contained a great deal more than what her own had carried.

“If you would be so kind, could you start hanging up the dresses in the closet?” Marié said as she began to get a small collection of shoes out of one box and lined them up against the wall in a very methodical and carefully-spaced manner.

Were she capable of sight, people would call her obsessive-compulsive. Since she was not, however, she only came across as methodical in making sure that she knew where all of her items were.

The two worked in relative silence for a little while, save for the occasional question of, “Hey where do you need this?” and the appropriate response of “could you put it in (insert location here).” Unfortunately, as is the case with all things peaceful, their quiet was disrupted by a roaring sound of something being shoved down the hallway.

Eien perked up and turned around to see a bed careening down the hallway, pushed by one Kudou Jin, who gave a passionate cry of “Oraaaaa!” as he let it coast for a little bit out into the massive foyer that connected the dormitories to the main school building.

Of course, Eien had only one question, “Dude, what the fuck?” She was able to swear when Alex wasn’t around, and considered it a blessing that she could in this case.

“Such furnishings are completely unnecessary!” Jin said in response as he dusted his hands off and started to go back to his room.

Eien turned to stare at Marié, who had moved alongside her and said, “What the fuck?”

“I was thinking much the same. Perhaps he requires only an air mattress or a futon,” Marié said in return.

“Nah,” said a third voice as they stepped out into the hallway. Akira leaned against her doorframe with her arms folded over her chest. She chuckled in mild amusement as she watched Jin go back to his room. “He doesn’t sleep on the ground.”

Even Marié’s face crinkled in confusion as Eien asked the inevitable, “How does he sleep, then? Does he hang from the ceiling like a bat or something?”

“That’s… actually not far off,” Akira said, and went back into her own room. Her crypticism, of course, left Eien and Marié with more questions than answers.

Down the hall, though, an all-new altercation broke out with roars of anger.

“Holy fucking SHIT, your ego is so bloated I’m surprised they didn’t call you the Ultimate Blimp!” Yu shouted at Yanagi, free to swear without consequence now that the bird was out of earshot.

“At least I have a sense of self beyond my tattoos,” Yanagi said, projecting his voice to make him seem loud without actually shouting.

“I earned every single one of these, clown,” Yu said, cracking her knuckles. It seems she had adopted Nezumi’s nickname for Yanagi to… well, much the same effect. He rolled with the punches same as before and only gave a scoffing laugh.

“Oh yes, we are all very familiar with how Yakuza ‘earn’ things,” He said, “Take what you can, give nothing back. In most cultures, that would be called ‘stealing’ instead of ‘earning.’”

Yu grit her teeth and, for a moment, Eien thought that she was going to throw a punch at him. While she got the feeling that the brawl that would ensue as a result would probably wind up selling out should they decide to put it on pay-per-view, it would likely wind up destroying a good portion of the hallway and disturb the limited tranquility that they had.

Instead, Yu only said, “Lord Byron is a subpar author and Ernest Hemingway is a hack.”

Yanagi stopped dead and raised a finger in an accusatory gesture, “You take that back.”

“The only good author that ever came out of the English Language was E.L. James,” Yu continued to prod, knowing full well that she had found a way to get under his skin.

He ground his teeth and said, “One more word out of your mouth and I’ll serve them right back to you with a side of fist.”

“Maya Angelou should never be taught in a classroom.”

“You seriously don’t have anything better to do than insult writers that have no stake in this argument?”

“It’s working isn’t it?” Yu said with a wolfish smile.

“Well at least none of them got chemical burns from dying the carpet to match the drapes,” Yanagi said, fury in his eyes.

Now it was Yu’s turn to stop, and her face turned the same shade of read that Eien’s had when Chie had first shown her face. They were both touching on nerves here, and Yanagi knew it.

“Oops,” he said, covering his mouth in mock shame, “I don’t think I was supposed to know about that.”

“You shut your flowery yap, you… fuckwit!” Yu said as she balled her fists at her sides.

“Better for flowers to come out of my mouth than the sewage that spews from yours,” Yanagi responded, chuckling as he turned around and made his way into his room, right across the way from Yu’s.

The Ultimate Driver fumed for a moment before she, too, turned around and made her way back into her domicile. She slammed the door shut behind her and the sounds of villainous laughter came from Yanagi’s room.

“Are they going to do that every time they run into each other?” Eien said as she glanced over at Marié.

“Probably. I find it funny,” the other girl responded as she turned and went back into her room and began to sort through a box of books. They were all written in braille, so they might as well have been Greek to Eien. 

“Why?” Eien said as she began assisting with the tomes, “One of these days, one of them is going to throw a punch at the other and then we’ll have a brawl on our hands.”

“Either that, or they’ll fuck,” Marié said, and Eien stumbled over her own feet, almost dropping the armful of books in the process.

“What was that?!” Eien said in exasperation, her face contorted in confusion.

“I can swear, too,” Marié said with a knowing smile, “Just because I look cute and sweet doesn’t mean I can’t cuss like a sailor from time to time.”

“I mean, yeah,” Eien said as she shakily handed over the stack of precariously perched books to Marié, “But I was more concerned with the content of what you were saying.”

“They’re either going to get in a fistfight that we could probably sell tickets to, or they’ll wind up having sex,” Marié said again with a shrug as she shelved the texts, “It happens. Sometimes people just hate each other so much that they pin one another up against the wall and just… you know.”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t really have any desire to think about it,” Eien said with a shudder.

“Suit yourself,” Marié said as she shelved the last of the books. Eien broke down the box and tucked it in the closet, much as she had with her own, and turned around to see one of the subjects of their conversation leaning in the doorway.

“Need a hand?” Yanagi said as he came in, “Or is two sets enough for you, princess?”

“I’m not a princess,” Marié said with a chuckle, “Though people tend to treat me like one. Also, you’re supposed to knock before you come in.”

“Eh, it’s because you have the look,” Yanagi said with a slight shrug.

There was hardly any denying that Marié was the picture of the stereotypical princess. A Disney movie could have been written about her and she need only provide motion capture. Eien wouldn’t have been surprised if she started to sing and every critter within a five hundred foot radius immediately gravitated towards her.

She also wouldn’t have been surprised if she could win a person’s heart in a single song.

The rest of the unpacking went by rather quickly, and aside from Marié getting a little embarrassed when Yanagi started to unpack the box that housed her undergarments, there were no incidents.

“You struck me as a Plain Jane kind of gal, to be honest,” Yanagi said afterwards, prompting Marié to deliver a sound drubbing with her cane, whereupon he tried to shield himself from the various blows she delivered upon his head and shoulders, “Ow! Ow! Okay sorry, sorry!”

She stopped, and her face was about as red as a tomato before he said, “Jeez… No wonder you’re more into lace.”

The drubbing began anew, and Eien found herself stifling a laugh at the sight of Yanagi flailing to keep her cane from smacking him in the face again. They weren’t any particularly rough blows, and would not bruise, but that did not change the fact that they were incredibly inconvenient at the time.

“Ouch! Come-ow! Come on! It was just a –oof!- joke!” He said as he started to back away towards the door, “Jesus christ I’m gonna have to abscond the hell out of here.”

Eien’s gaze immediately shifted towards him, and they locked eyes for the briefest of moments. That word. “Abscond.” It had been ruined for so many people during the course of their youths, and Eien knew that he was the same variety of garbage that she was.

And he knew that she knew.

And she knew that he knew that she knew.

And the author knows that you, dear readers, know that this is going to get out of hand if I let it, so we should just nip this in the bud before it does.

The truth of the matter is that when a pair of purveyors of a certain webcomic meet, and one of them drops a hint that they have read aforementioned webcomic, all people that have used the word “kismesis” or covered themselves in grey paint will know that another piece of refuse sits atop the trash pile.

Much as Eien knew that Yanagi was a single half-eaten apple, perched precariously on an empty can of beans and threatening to cascade down a mountain of similar food waste, tumbling along until this metaphor became forgotten.

To “abscond” became a necessity before his tumble landed him directly in the shame dumpster.

Yanagi left the second he managed to find a break in the very irritated barrage of French that Marié threw at him on his way out, and Eien gave a glance over to Marié with a shadow of a smile on her lips. “So you’re not angry at me knowing what kind of underwear you have?”

“No. As long as you don’t tell anyone,” Marié said, her brow furrowed in anger, “Ever.”

“Fair enough. Just don’t hit me with the cane when Alex is on my shoulder,” she explained as she put the last collapsed box into the closet.

“I don’t have any intentions of hitting you with a cane, Eien,” Marié said as she sat down on her bed, “But I will if I have to.”

“Anyway,” Eien said, changing the subject and cracking her back, “that takes care of everything. It’s just about lunchtime, so do you want to grab a bite to eat?”

“Absolutely,” Marié said with a smile, “I heard that they have the Ultimate Cook working the cafeteria these days.”

“Teruteru Hanamura?” Eien said with a raised eyebrow, “Wasn’t he with…”

“The Remnants of Despair? I believe so. Even after they took responsibility for the Final Killing Game, Headmaster Naegi went out of his way to help them back into society, even going so far as to give a lot of them positions at Hope’s Peak. Mr. Hanamura is just one of the people rehabilitated through the New World Program that are currently working on site,” Marié explained. 

“And you don’t… feel uncomfortable with them around?” Eien said, suddenly slightly apprehensive.

“Why would I?” Marié said as she swept her cane in front of her, trying to make sure that the way was clear before she started walking to the dining hall, “If they turn on us, it’s not like it will last very long. And if Headmaster Naegi trusts them enough to put them in the same environment as us, I think that’s a sign we can trust them too.”

Eien was silent for a moment. Everyone had lost friends, family during the Tragedy. She had lost her own brother. From what Eien had read, Marié had lost her father in the first days of the fighting. If she was able to forgive the Remnants of Despair for what they had done…

“Besides, I don’t think it’s truly their fault,” Marié said, as though she were reading Eien’s mind.

“Then whose fault is it?” Eien asked as they made their way into the dining hall.

“That cunt Junko Enoshima,” Marié practically spat the name out as if it was bitter on her tongue.

The line at the cafeteria was only three people deep, and Eien led Marié to take a place right behind Ryo. Within the kitchen, a short, round man bustled about in an apron and a small cap. “Alright, everyone, line yourselves up and eat to your heart’s content. There’s enough for everyone,” he explained.

The food being served was classic comfort. Beef stew, dumplings, mountains of white rice, steamed egg, dango, and fish were among the options laid out for everyone to enjoy, and every bit of it smelled delicious.

“Oh my,” the cook behind the counter said as he spied the two ladies coming up to the front of the line. He had a round face and wore a broad smile. A pair of beady eyes gazed out from under thick, bushy eyebrows, and he had a trickle of a nosebleed running down his face. “You two are very lovely and I think I should invite you back here for some private cooking classes.”

Marié found this inexplicably amusing as she was served, but Eien was mainly disgusted. How someone could talk so casually make innuendo towards people was beyond her, and that wasn’t even considering her primal apprehension about him having been Ultimate Despair.

Eien’s repast was simple. She took a piece of fish and some rice, a spoonful of steamed egg, and nothing more. The irony that she ate like a bird was not lost on her.

Marié, surprisingly, took enough food to feed Eien twice over. A bowl of stew over rice, dango, and a half dozen dumplings covered her plate, to her satisfaction, and Eien asked only a simple question.

“Where do you think you’re going to put all of that?” she asked as they sat down.

“In my stomach,” Marié responded as naturally as breathing.

“How on earth can you eat that much?”

“With my mouth.”

Eien gave Marié a level stare as the other girl got her chopsticks at the ready and began to dig in. “Are you always this snarky?” Eien asked as Marié popped one of the dumplings into her mouth with a satisfied expression and a sound that bordered on orgasmic.

Once she had swallowed, Marié said, “Only when it’s funny.”

“Hm… I see,” Eien responded as she took her first bite.

“I don’t.”

Eien almost choked on her steamed egg as she tried to swallow and laugh at the joke at the same time, then shot a glance over at Marié that was supposed to be able to curdle milk. Instead, it only managed to advance it a few more days towards its expiration date.

Despite the mirth surrounding them at the time, it was disrupted by a statement in English from behind them.

Eien turned around to see the massive, plaid-covered chest of one Garrett Holstein, a massive bowl of stew in his hands. He wore a massive, gap-toothed grin that was likely intended to be friendly, yet instead came across as foreboding.

Eien did not like large men. Large men were the source of a lot of trouble in the world, and she felt herself quaking a little bit.

“Garrett wants to join us for lunch,” Marié explained, “Is that alright?”

Above her, the smiling face of the Ultimate Cowboy did not waver.


	4. Chapter 4

Even as Garrett stood over them, Eien felt her death inching closer and closer towards her. This is not to say that she did not believe the Ultimate Cowboy was a friendly person, and probably an excellent person to have a conversation with. She simply had a great deal of apprehension about people that were great in size and could probably snap her like a twig over their knee.

“Eien?” Marié asked again, her face creasing in concern. Above them, Garrett’s smile shrank by a few molars and he tilted his head as his brow furrowed in mild worry. “Is it okay if Garrett sits with us?”

“Um, yeah!” Marié said, not wanting to make any more enemies than necessary. For all she knew, Garrett could be the sweetest, kindest man in the world. He might also be a complete and total douchecanoe, much like Yu, but she wouldn’t know until she actually spoke to him.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand any English, though,” she admitted, and rubbed the back of her head nervously. 

“I can translate for the both of you,” Marié said with a satisfied smile, “I don’t particularly mind.” She passed on Eien’s approval to Garrett, who made his way around the table and sat across from the pair with an audible “whud.” He immediately took off his hat and tucked it under his chair and ran a hand through his hair to free up the curly red locks from the sweat and confinement.

He began speaking in rapid-fire English to Eien, and Marié translated effortlessly. “So you and Ms. Fujiyama got in a little altercation back there. Mind if I ask what that was about? I ain’t too good with Japanese just yet, so it’s hard for me to keep up.”

Of course. That made sense. Eien explained the nature of Alex, and why people were not allowed to swear around him. As Marié translated for her, he began to nod in understanding bit by bit, and eventually snapped his fingers as a lightbulb came on for him.

“So what you’re sayin’ is that Alex is the second version of a previous experiment, and that you’re tryin’ to make sure that he learns language in a controlled environment instead of pickin’ it up willy-nilly,” he said, and it took a few seconds for Marié to finish translating it before Eien confirmed.

“That’s right,” she said, “He has been to places where people take caution with their language, but this is his first time in an environment that is so far out of my control that I have to put in rules to make sure that the experiment isn’t corrupted.”

“If’n it ain’t too much trouble,” Garrett responded, “I’d like to meet the little fella sometime. It’s always nice to make a new friend, even if they’re a bird.”

The warmth in his voice, even though she couldn’t understand the words behind them, was heartening, and she found herself warming up to this strange, boisterous American. Eien gave him a smile and nodded saying, “I think that Alex would like to meet you too.”

“In return, I reckon I could teach you a thing or two about ridin’, ropin’, or shootin’. You never know when somethin’ like that will come in handy,” He said as he extended a hand out to her for a knuckle tap.

Eien stared down at the big, meaty paw for a second and reached out to bump her knuckles against it. The damn thing had to be almost twice the size of her own, and she felt more fragile than ever in that moment.

The rest of lunch went by without incident, the occasional chatter between the people at various tables filling the air with a pleasant static. As they talked, Eien took in how the various cliques had already begun to form.

Fumiko sat by herself and coldly stared at anyone else that tried to approach her. Conversely, Akira and Jin were stealing bits and pieces from each other’s plates even as they talked with Itsumi and Genjiro

Ryo and Yanagi enjoyed a quiet conversation, contrary to the over-the-top attitude that Ryo had portrayed earlier that day. At one point, they passed a flask back and forth to add a little something (presumably alcohol) to their coffee. Eien did not drink, nor did she judge those that did, but it was a little disconcerting to see guys spiking their drinks at lunchtime. Then again, they might be forgiven for wanting a little something extra to take the edge off a very hectic and labor-intensive morning.

Two tables over from them, Chie and Nezumi had a conversation that mainly consisted of snark from Nezumi and laughter from Chie. Little did Chie realize that Nezumi was using those opportunities that Chie wasn’t looking to steal things from her plate.

Yoro and Oto took their seats not too far from Eien and her friends. Oto proceeded to say some rather unkind things about Garrett in such a way that he was not able to hear, which immediately prompted Yoro to prod him with her chopsticks and say, “That’s not very nice.”

It was nice knowing that there were only a few people that were willing to look down on Garrett because he was one hundred percent American instead of treating him as a fellow classmate.

Finally, Yu walked into the dining hall and made her way to the lunch line, taking a heap of rice, a lot of egg, and enough dango to feed a family of three before she made her way to sit with Chie and Nezumi. It seemed that, the initial bravado aside, Yu was willing to put aside her differences with Nezumi and actually work on forming an amicable relationship.

Not that it didn’t stop Nezumi from stealing one or two dango here and there.

Truthfully, Eien half expected Yanagi and Yu to start another face-off right then and there because they were simply within a few meters of each other. But, even though they shot occasional glares towards each other, they didn’t really do anything about it. Even so, there was a palpable tension in the room, not unlike the tension that one experiences when watching a horror movie and the atmosphere is building up to a massive jumpscare.

Except instead of the monster showing its face and terrifying everyone halfway to death, two monsters would stand up and start duking it out a la Pacific Rim in such a way that it would leave the whole of the cafeteria looking like a warzone and poor Teruteru Hanamura hiding in the freezer out of fear for his life.

The tension, however, was manageable, and was easily the most unbearable portion of the meal, and dissipated the second Yanagi left the dining hall, presumably to return to his room.

One by one, people finished up, sent their dishes on the conveyor to be washed, and did… well, whatever they desired. Ryo had made his way to the front door, presumably to go and hone his talent, and Itsumi and Fumiko both appeared to be heading to the sports pitch. Aside from that, though, everyone went back to their respective rooms.

The rest of the day passed by in a relatively quiet haze, at least until bedtime. Eien got Alex out of his cage and spent some time with him, teaching him a couple of new words and having him use them in context. One of the words used the “p” sound, which couldn’t be pronounced very well due to Alex’s distinct lack of lips, so he wound up making up a phrase that did not use that sound yet still conveyed the same concept.

As one could understand, this made Eien very happy, and she practically bounced in her chair once he modified the word to fit his own physical limitations. Such was the joy of working with an intelligence that continued to advance over the course of study. 

Soon enough, though, the sun began to descend past the horizon, and Eien found sleep beckoning her to bed.

“Good night,” she said to Alex.

“Sleep well, mama,” the bird responded even as she started to drift off into the realm of dreams.

She rested well, her mind drifting to one of her favorite places: the sky. She soared without wings, coasting up into the air and spinning over the skyline of Tokyo. She wove and spun around various buildings…

Until screams woke her up.

A man, shouting from the room next to hers, followed by a thud as someone hit the ground. Needless to say, Eien was surprised about two things.

First and foremost, that the Future Foundation had removed the soundproofing from the rooms, presumably so people would be able to hear should something screwy happen during the course of the night. Secondly, that someone was already being attacked on their first day back to school.

She ran out of her room, opening the door and seeing that several other people had done the same. At the very least, Ryo, whose room was on the other side of Yanagi’s, and Yu, who was across the way, had poked their heads out and were at the very least, curious.

Even in the moment, Eien took a second to admire the other two’s choice in pajamas. Ryo wore a pair of basketball shorts and nothing else, while Yu chose to wear a tank top and a pair of boxers. Both were stark contrasts to Eien’s choice of pajama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt.

“Someone finally doing in that piece of shit wordsmith?” Yu said with a scoff, “Good fucking riddance.” She immediately saw Eien, and her step faltered, wondering if death lingered on her shoulder, but visibly relaxed when she saw that Alex was not present.

“I don’t think so,” Ryo said as he rapped his large knuckles on the door and waited for a second, “I think there would have been even more screaming if that were the case.”

Eien nodded in agreement. She had known that Yanagi was a soldier, but she didn’t know how good of one he had been. For all she knew, he could have been full of bluster and bravado, and useless aside from his skill with language and metaphor.

After a fashion, Yanagi came to the door with sweat across his brow and a face as pale as death. He wore a white t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, much like Eien herself. He looked like he had stared death in the face and barely survived.

“You okay, man?” Ryo asked, his face set in concern, like a disapproving Easter Island monolith.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just… bad dreams,” he said, though Eien could immediately see that it was much more than that.

“Awww,” Yu said, immediately picking up where they had left off, “Is da widdle poet scawed of da dark? Does he need his bwankie? Does he need mama to wead him a bedtime stowy?” She gave a chuckle at the end and said, “Grow the hell up. There aren’t any monsters under your bed.”

“One more word,” Yanagi said, his voice gravely serious, “And your death will be slow.” There was a fury in his eyes, eyes the color of faded dollar bills, that made them seem almost luminescent in the dim light of evening. A few other heads poked out of the rooms from down the hall, but went right back to sleep once they saw people handling it.

“What the fuck-” Yu started to say, only to have Yanagi cut her off.

“That was three. I’ll follow through tomorrow morning.”

“I-” Yu started to say, puffing up and readying for a fight, only to have Ryo cut her off with a sharp gesture of his hand.

“Go back to sleep, Yu,” he said firmly, giving her a stare that was more serious than anything Eien had seen him do up until this point.

Yu stared at the walking wall, covered in experience and tattoos to prove it, and ran a quick numbers game in her head. Unable to come to an answer that she liked, she stuffed her hands into the waistband of her boxers and stalked back into her room. To her credit, she did not slam the door, but instead let it close behind her with only a moderate amount of noise.

The situation resolved, Ryo rested both of his hands on Yanagi’s shoulders and stared at him with only a single question on his lips, “You going to be alright, man?”

“Yeah…” Yanagi said, trying to convince himself as much as the two people standing with him.

“Do you need a nip?”

“Yeah,” he said, more sure of himself this time, “And a snack. I really could use a snack…”

“I’ll go with you to the dining hall,” Eien volunteered, wondering just how damaged this guy was. In this moment, all of his arrogance and pomp seemed to wash away, leaving only a man that had been through hell and back and had not emerged unscathed, just like the rest of them.

“Thanks,” Ryo said with a smile as he gave Eien a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Despite his size, the action was gentle and she did not go stumbling like she expected to, “I have to be up early otherwise the fish will get away. Just let me get what Yanagi needs.” He ducked back in his room and returned with a small metal flask that he handed over to Yanagi.

“You sure you’re going to be alright?” Ryo asked one final time.

“Yeah. I think I’m in good hands,” he said with a little more confidence, this time, and glanced over at Eien with a satisfied expression.

This human moment from him made her feel a little more at ease. It wasn’t easy for people to be vulnerable on the best of days, and Yanagi clearly wasn’t having a very good one at the present. If he set aside all of the bravado, the snark, the sass, and the (seemingly) unnecessary charm, he was someone that Eien felt she could call “friend.”

They made their way down to the dining hall in silence, and Yanagi ducked into the kitchen to return with a mug of coffee and a sandwich. Eien could smell the peanut butter, and she saw slices of banana sticking out the sides as well as…

Eien tilted her head in confusion, “Is that bacon?”

“Yeah,” Yanagi said after he swallowed the first bite, “I call it a ‘Fat Elvis.’”

Her expression changed from one of confusion to amusement as she started to chuckle at the name. “Like the American rock singer?”

“Ehh…” Yanagi said, tilting his hand back and forth in a “so-so” kind of gesture. “I wouldn’t exactly call him a ‘rock’ singer, but yeah. That would be him.”

“What would you call him, then?” Eien asked, a little curious, now.

“A guy that stole from both country and the blues, put his own spin on it, and the world called him a genius.”

Eien didn’t really listen to a lot of music, since she had to carefully curate her selection in order to make sure that Alex could listen to it and that it wouldn’t mess up her experiment. In this case, she would just have to take his word for it.

“Very well,” she said as he unstoppered the flask and poured its contents into the coffee mug. A caramel aroma wafted from its contents, but was heavily punctuated by the sour burn of alcohol. Eien frowned. “You’re really drinking, this late at night?”

“It helps me sleep,” Yanagi said flatly, “And it stops me from dreaming, most of the time.”

“Most?”

“There are a few times when I dream even if I’ve been drinking,” he explained with a sigh, “It’s not usually as bad as what happened tonight.”

“What happened tonight?” Eien prodded, hoping that she could use this moment of vulnerability in order to understand him a little better.

“I told you: Bad dreams,” he said, turning a little defensive once again.

“Bad dreams don’t leave you screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night and make you fall out of bed. Nor do they leave you looking the way you did,” Eien said. She didn’t know much about how other people tended to sleep, but what she did know was that reactions like his were abnormal.

“These ones do,” he said, covering up his statement with a sip of coffee. He offered it to her as well, only for her to wave it off.

“I don’t drink,” she said, and left it at that.

“Suit yourself,” he said, completely non-judgemental, and took another sip.

“So why do these dreams mess you up so badly?” Eien asked, knowing that he was either going to be honest with her or that he was going to close himself off. She hoped it wasn’t the latter, because that would only make things a lot more difficult.

He paused, took another bite of his Fat Elvis sandwich, and swallowed before he said, quietly, “Have you ever heard of night terrors?”

Eien shook her head. She had heard the phrase before, usually combined with the words “suffering from,” so she knew that it couldn’t possibly be anything good.

“What’s the worst nightmare you’ve ever had?” Yanagi asked. Eien tilted her head and pondered for a second as he continued, “Like the one where you were so scared that it was real that you had to make sure it wasn’t.”

Eien immediately knew. “I lost Alex,” she explained, “and people in those Monokuma masks made me watch.”

“Imagine that the nightmare keeps on going when you open your eyes,” Yanagi said, folding his hands and leaning back in his chair, “And that there’s no way for you to know what is real and what isn’t. Even though Alex is right there, you just can’t be sure that it’s actually him.”

The thought alone made Eien break out in a cold sweat. “That’s horrible,” she said under her breath as Yanagi took another drink of his coffee.

“Now imagine that happens to you once or twice a month,” he said again, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. He still munched on his sandwich as if he had just talked about the casual resurgence of Neo-Dadaism as an art form in online forums.

That didn’t make Eien so much scared as annoyed, “You mean I’m going to have to deal with you screaming and waking me up twice a month?”

“No,” Yanagi said with a shake of the head, “This episode was just pretty bad.”

That put her a little more at ease, though there was certainly a question what needed answering.

“What were you dreaming about?” she asked.

“Same thing that everyone else does,” Yanagi explained, “The war.”

That went without saying. Everyone that had participated in the fight against Despair had seen things that could not be unseen. The Ultimates of past, present, and future had very likely seen things that were much worse than the standard masses that had lived to tell the tale.

Eien herself had seen crows, ravens, and vultures gorging themselves on the corpses of dead in the streets of Kyoto. She had seen robotic Monokumas left over from the battles in the streets of Towa City thrusting six-inch razor claws into the bodies of the already-deceased. She had seen men and women in bear masks swinging implements of destruction at fleeing people with blood already running down their faces. All of those sights had left her with nightmares, true, but none as severe as what Yanagi had woken up from earlier.

“What had you seen that could have fucked you up so badly?” Eien asked, hoping that they would dispense with the games.

“A few different things,” Yanagi said, though instead of being cagier than a mad zookeeper, he continued, “It’s usually a different incident each time. Tonight was one of the missions I went on with the army. There was a time when we were supposed to clear out a hospital. Rumor had it that Mikan Tsumiki had been holed up there with a handful of loyal soldiers, and they had enough time to turn the place into a gauntlet of traps and danger.

“I was with my squad, and we turned a corner to come across the nursery.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, setting the specs down on the table in front of him and tilting his head back to look up at the ceiling.

“They were in the nursery. With baseball bats and cleavers,” Yanagi said. If he weren’t indoors and if he had a cigarette in hand, he would have taken a long drag and held it until he felt it killing his lungs. Instead, he only raised his coffee up to his lips and took a long drink. He didn’t have to look at Eien to sense that she was mortified.

Eien didn’t know if she would be able to sleep with that imagery in her head. If there were just as many bad memories like that one floating around inside his head, she was surprised that he didn’t wake up screaming more often than he already did.

There was no sense in asking why the Despairs did what they did. They were Despair. It was in their nature to cause sights that would haunt people for the rest of their days. Instead she only asked, “How do you live with those memories?”

“As best as I can, Ms. Hayabusa,” he said with a chuckle as he finished off his coffee. There was a touch of a slur to his voice now that the alcohol had started to kick in, but he was still as articulate as ever, “There are memories, beautiful, wonderful memories that you wish you could hold onto for your entire life. There was one time where a bomb went off in a skyscraper and blew the glass out of four stories to come spraying down onto the ground. The sun was rising at that time, and we could see rainbows in the glass shards as they came down to the ground.

“There was another moment when I saw New Year’s fireworks going off over a city that had been saved from burning to the ground. The smoke and the fireworks played together so beautifully that it seemed like the clouds were painted with blue, green, and pink. I have never seen the Aurora Borealis, but I thought I did that night when the fireworks were done,” he explained as he shifted his gaze back to her. “There are things in this world that are just too lovely for us to appropriately describe in words, and we have to hang onto those, and we can’t let the ugly get in the way. It’s just that the ugly does a really good job of doing that for a lot of people.”

Eien was silent for a moment, the images in her mind so vivid, so pointed that it was almost like she had been there herself. This was a mere touch of his talent, she realized. The words were half of the equation, but they would not have been as beautiful on paper. He had to be the ones to speak them, to give them life and substance. Otherwise, they would have been just words. They never could have been true poetry.

“You’re good at that,” she said, a satisfied smile on her face, “using your words.” It was almost like she had completely forgotten the grisly scenes that he had presented her with less than two minutes before.

“And I hope that I get to see you be as good in using your birds,” Yanagi responded with a chuckle as he finished off his sandwich. He stood up and said, “Thanks for this. It’s hard talking about these kinds of things with people.”

Eien rose with him and turned back towards the dorms. “I hope that you will listen to me when I run into trouble of my own,” she responded.

“Of course I will,” he said matter-of-factly. A dust of rose on his cheeks (possibly from the alcohol) appeared as he said, “I mean, it’s what friends are for… right?”

Eien gave him a look of mild surprise. It seemed almost a little inconceivable that someone as pompous and borderline egotistical (if she had heard him call him that, he would have said “what do you mean, ‘borderline?’”) as he would have a hard time thinking of someone as his friend. But, tonight was all about being vulnerable, so she nodded. “Yeah, it is what friends are for.”

Yanagi smiled. He wanted to hug her, but didn’t think that they were close enough to do that much just yet.

For now, there was only a quiet sense of contentment as they made their way back to their rooms, and the idea of looking forward to tomorrow.


End file.
